Non-food, woody materials (namely lignocellulosic biomass) is the largest renewable reservoir of fermentable starches to substitute fossil fuels. It can be used to produce bio-based polymers and materials for any kind of ...

Plant cell walls, as repositories of fixed carbon, are an important source of biomass, which is mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. However, the complex lignin structure makes it a rather inefficient ...

Celignis founder Dr. Daniel Hayes discovered that although feedstock composition was a critical factor for the success of biomass transformation processes, precise data was missing for a wide range of feedstocks. To address ...

Marine scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other groups examining the ecological status of coral reefs across the Indian and Pacific oceans have uncovered an unsettling fact: even the best coral reef marine ...

The electrochemical reduction of a group of organic compounds on platinum is strongly dependent on the arrangement of the atoms in the platinum surface. Christoph Bondue, postdoc in Marc Koper's group, published this in Nature ...

Almost 1.6 billion people – more than a quarter of the global population – rely on forests for their livelihood. Of this number, it's said that around 60 million indigenous people are almost entirely dependent on forests ...

The UK's efforts to develop facilities to remove carbon emissions from power stations took a step forward with news of a demonstrator project getting underway at the Drax plant in north Yorkshire. Where most electricity carbon ...

Set to fly in 2022, ESA's Biomass Earth Explorer satellite with its 12-m diameter radar antenna will pierce through woodland canopies to perform a global survey of Earth's forests – and see how they change over the course ...

DNA sequencing of microbial samples can give researchers and medical professionals a wealth of information about microbiomes – the communities of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies and the environments all around us. ...

Biomass

Biomass, is a renewable energy source, biological material derived from living, or recently living organisms, such as wood, waste, and alcohol fuels. Biomass is commonly plant matter grown to generate electricity[1] or produce heat. For example, forest residues (such as dead trees, branches and tree stumps), yard clippings and wood chips may be used as biofuel. However, biomass also includes plant or animal matter used for production of fibers or chemicals. Biomass may also include biodegradable wastes that can be burnt as fuel. It excludes organic material such as fossil fuel which has been transformed by geological processes into substances such as coal or petroleum.

Industrial biomass can be grown from numerous types of plant, including miscanthus, switchgrass, hemp, corn, poplar, willow, sorghum, sugarcane, and a variety of tree species, ranging from eucalyptus to oil palm (palm oil). The particular plant used is usually not important to the end products, but it does affect the processing of the raw material.

Although fossil fuels have their origin in ancient biomass, they are not considered biomass by the generally accepted definition because they contain carbon that has been "out" of the carbon cycle for a very long time. Their combustion therefore disturbs the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere.

Plastics from biomass, like some recently developed to dissolve in seawater, are made the same way as petroleum-based plastics. These plastics are actually cheaper to manufacture and meet or exceed most performance standards, but they lack the same water resistance or longevity as conventional plastics.

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